


our hearts were on fire and it burned in our bones

by marcaskane (noblydonedonnanoble)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 11:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3568007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/marcaskane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The two of them fell into a friendship because Marcus was one of the only people who could keep up with her.</em>
</p><p>A childhood friendship between Abby and Marcus grows into something more. Canon compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our hearts were on fire and it burned in our bones

**Author's Note:**

> I definitely headcanon a past relationship between Abby and Marcus--it just fits into the canon so seamlessly. This is me toying with one of the many scenarios that I've imagined.

  _I._

               The two of them fell into a friendship because Marcus was one of the only people who could keep up with her.

                Abigail was astoundingly clever and everyone knew it. She was years beyond everyone else and she had been told by many people that she would probably have her pick of any job on the Ark once she finished school. Marcus had overheard their teacher talking with her mom once about how lucky the Ark was to have Abigail: “It’s people like Abigail that keep us going up here,” she said.

                It scared a lot of the other kids away, but not Marcus. He found her enthusiasm to be contagious and he treasured the moments that he spent at her side because she came at everything with such _fervor_ and he wanted to be a part of it in any way he could.

                What pleased him was that she seemed to want him around. She began to ask him to sit beside her in class, then she began to find him before going to meals in order to ask him if he wanted to eat with her. Eventually they both took it as a given, and she stopped asking.

                For some reason, Marcus liked that even more.

 

_II._

                One evening while their parents were at some forum, she and Marcus were alone in his and his mother’s quarters when she suggested that they try some of the liquor that she knew her parents had hidden away.

                Marcus’s surprise didn’t last long—the moment he raised his eyebrows, and before he could even question the suggestion, she said, “Not to get drunk, Marcus, I’ve just never had any before. Have you?”

                She knew the answer. His mother would never be caught dead buying contraband moonshine. He slowly shook his head.

                “Maybe just a sip,” he agreed.

                He didn’t bother to ask the other question lurking in the back of mind, perhaps because he had a guess anyway, but that didn’t stop him from being curious about why she wanted to drink in the first place.

                (It was probably because she was tired of doing what was right and expected all the time.)

                They took more than just one sip. Not much more but it made them both just tipsy enough that as the night drew on, their homework laid unfinished while they sat on the floor against a wall, Abby’s head on his shoulder as she babbled on.

                It was a side of her that he had never seen. He enjoyed this, enjoyed seeing her flustered and stumbling over her words when she was always so sure and well-spoken.

                Her cheeks were tinged pink as she sat up and leaned in close and pressed a soft, tentative kiss to his lips. And Marcus froze.

                She pulled back and looked him in the eye. He couldn’t be sure what she saw there but next thing, Abby was murmuring, “Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

                Marcus swallowed hard. She didn’t know? He’d been thinking about doing that for ages but now here she was, dismissing their first kiss the moment it happened.

                Alright then. If she didn’t want that, then he could dismiss it too. “That’s okay,” he whispered. “Maybe… maybe the liquor was just stronger than we thought.”

 

_III._

                “You know that dance that’s happening on Saturday?”

                Marcus, who was nearly done with a rather difficult calculus problem, nearly dropped his pencil as soon as the words came out of Abby’s mouth. He stared down at the page for a few seconds before finally saying, “Mhm. What about it?”

                “Jake Griffin asked me to go with him.”

                “Oh?” Marcus hesitated, unsure of how much of an interest he was willing to feign. “Are you going to?”

                “No, I thought it would be weird. He and I have only really spoken a few times.”

                Relief welled up in his gut and he nodded for lack of a better response, eyes still on the paper before him. “Makes sense. Um, I’m stuck on this problem, could you check it and tell me where I went wrong?”

                Abby rose from her seat and came around the table, leaning down to get a good look, and she pointed to a point about halfway down the page. “This should be a second derivative. I don’t know how you could have missed that.” She didn’t mean it in a derisive way—she just knew he should know better.

                “Just distracted, I guess,” he told her lightly. “Thank you.”

                She lingered at his side. Marcus was too scared to look her way, but he was embarrassingly aware of how close she was standing, of the smell of her soap and—

                “Marcus.”

                He looked up at her before he could think it through and then her lips were on his. Unlike their first kiss, it was not tentative; Abby pressed into him and Marcus reacted, hands flying out to grasp at her waist and pulling her haphazardly into his lap.

                She grinned against his mouth. “So you are interested.”

                Despite his desire to continue kissing her for the foreseeable future, he pulled back so that he could look her in the eye. “Could you not tell?”

                “I thought… what with how you reacted the first time…”

                “You took it back before I could even process it. I thought you just did it because you were drunk.”

                Abby shook her head. And Marcus smiled, and pulled her close again.

 

_IV._

                Marcus loved the warm, solid feel of her in his arms. Abby always teased him when he mentioned it, told him that he’d probably be that enthusiastic about any girl who was charitable enough to let him into her pants.

                (Her words, muttered playfully against his neck as she peppered it with kisses.)

                But he really felt it. As much as he had always admired her endless enthusiasm, he had never found something that he cared for so strongly…

                Except for her, maybe.

                Except for this.

                And there was something about a moment that morning, when she sat up in his bed and leaned down to grab her shirt from the floor—something about the curve of her back and how her face was settled half in shadow, something about her low voice as she told him about the observation hours she was anticipating in medical that day—that prompted him to smile softly.

                He reached out and took hold of her wrist and when she looked back at him, eyes questioning, Marcus spoke very matter-of-factly. “I love you.”

                Abby returned the soft smile. “I love you too.”

  

 _V._              

                As childhood friends, they had had their fair share of disagreements. Silly things, always, like spoiling the end of a sports game that one of them had already seen, or grabbing one too many fries from the other’s plate.

                But their full-fledged couple’s arguments were different and left both Abby and Marcus feeling anxious and distressed. It was mostly about Marcus—at first it was little things that he did that seemed to aggravate her, but they were always minimal enough that there was no way it merited her severe response. No way he deserved quite such long silences, such disappointed gazes.

                Until he finished a Council meeting late one evening. It had been drawn out over some absurd mess that Marcus, as the newest member of the council, only vaguely understood. He stopped by Abby’s room to apologize for missing dinner.

                It was then that she finally yelled.

                He wasn’t the same since he started really working toward becoming a Councilman, she said. He wasn’t the man she fell in love with.

                Marcus transitioned from hurt to angry rather quickly. “I put up with your nonsense hours in the hospital with no complaints but you’re angry with me after one missed meal?”

                “This isn’t about dinner, Marcus.”

                Frankly, he didn’t understand what the problem was. He wanted to be a Councilman so that he could make sure that the Ark lasted for as long as they needed to be there. Abby had always said that it seemed like such a noble goal. What changed?

 

_VI._

                There was no beginning of the end. Marcus knew there had to be some sort of progression but as far as he saw, he blinked and it was over.

                He blinked again and she was dating—

                Engaged—

                Married.

                And, of all people, to the man that she had turned down in favor of Marcus years before.


End file.
